Looking Back to Understand What's Ahead: The story of Chronicle

Just wanted to let everyone who cares know that I've started a blog dedicated to the stories of the past that really interest me.

Looking Back to Understand What's Ahead

Oh! It's Alice! Like from Alice in Wonderland! I get it!

Cameron had to gently walk me through this. Since I'm bloggin again, I was trying to find all of the blogs I liked back in the day, and I found most of them. I found Every Day I Write the Book. I found KP's blog that seemed preoccupied with someone named "Megabeast." (Then I read a little and suddenly I became preoccupied with the megabeast. JP, I can't believe you just looked out the window--a display of superhuman patience. I probably would have looked out the window too . . . through broken shards of glass at the megabeast's crumpled form laying on the front lawn.) I saw that kaycee and Sarah were still around. But I couldn't find Becca. I remembered her blog having something to do with a Looking Glass, so I punched it in, and up came Through the Looking Glass. But the blogger's name was Alice. That couldn't be it. But I liked the Looking Glass blog. Now I know why.

So I'm kind of running my own business and stuff. It's called Chronicle. We help people with their personal and family histories. I have a partner. His name is Cord. It is a weird name; but he's a good guy. We're trying to build a business by helping people research, write, edit, design, print and bind their family histories. We can help anyone at any stage of the process. If they just need design help, we can do that. If they want to design it and print it, we can do that. If they need help writing it, we can do that.

We decided to do this because personal histories and family histories are the best kinds of books in the world. At some point, you realized that knowing where you come from is worth more than almost anything. My inspiration for this kind of work came when I read my uncle's personal history. He spent hundreds of hours writing his story, and thousands of dollars printing it. In it I found information about my mom and sister, who were taken by a drunk driver in 1985. There were things I never knew about and even more precious things I had forgotten. I love doing this. It's the best work in the world . . . for a book guy like me.

C'mon God, you know me. I know me. I know you know me. I know you know I know me. So why?

I finished that last post and I realized I hadn't said everything that was on my mind.

My little guy Sam is starting to talk a lot. The window to his personality is open, and it's a lot of fun. Of course, sometimes his utterances give us cause for concern. The other day he yelled in a grating, high-pitched voice, "Don'ta put it out wif your boots, Daddy!" This outburst caused a shiver down my spine and deep sense of dread and foreboding. No. Please. Not MY son.

Our littler guy Josh is so interesting. He smiles so much; I sometimes feel like I don't deserve to be his dad. He's pretty impressed with himself because he can now sit up by himself in his crib. He doesn't get happy about it anywhere else. Not on the floor, in the tub. But if he's in his crib, and he's sitting up, he's going beserk.

Sometimes I look at my life and what I've got: this small room with two kids, Becca, and all of the uncertainty and disappointment outside of that room and I wonder why I have this life. Would an all-knowing God really give this kind of reward to someone like me? It sounds trite, but I ask that question because I know myself well, and I'm not really able to pull the wool over my own eyes. And according to the rules of life I believe in, I'm not worthy of this life. It's not like I have this perfect life either--an anti-Brady Bunch mixed family that tries its best but doesn't always pull it off, loved-ones in crisis, financial uncertainty, and an expanding waistline. But my little room in this world is so safe, cozy, and comfortable.

So at least once every day, I have no choice but to stop and think: "I hope you're who I believe you are. I'm pretty sure I know you, and so I sometimes want to ask 'why?' But I'll just say 'thank you.'"

9 to 5 and 10 to 2

That's my new work schedule . . . and it is not fun. But I am more professionally satisfied than I have ever been. You see, I started my own business. I am a publisher now. It's exciting. I've never really been "excited" about my professional career before. I've had jobs that I've enjoyed. But there was never excitement--because there was never fear. Fear is now an integral part of my life, well, my life as a "provider" at least. There's so much uncertainty about what I'm doing that it's kind of cool. I'm out there on the edge. Boom or bust. I could do well, get rich, "build something." I could also come away with nothing but some business credit card debt. Now that's exciting . . . and insane. More later . . .

The things you are willing to do for a friend

I've been trying, without much luck, to stay in touch with my friend Cameron since he moved to the north of the valley and I moved to the south. Maybe I'm stupid to try, but dang it, I love the guy. So I am going to blog again, because it's a way to stay in touch with my hoodoo hunting friend.

I'm not sure my blogs will be terribly interesting, but I'm going to try. And I've realized something. Blogging is a really good way to hone one's skills in the craft of writing. So I'm going to try hard to write well. Not that it matters to anyone or that anyone will read it. It'll be mostly for me.